Earlier this week Eric Pickles announced that the guidelines for council publicity would be tightened, with the recommendation that local authorities should publish no more than four council newspapers a year. So is he right? We ask a communications expert and a council blogger for their views.

No, local authority newspapers are a valuable communications tool

We welcome the Government's new publicity code, which clarifies the rules on local authority publicity, and we support the position that local authority newspapers should not seek to 'emulate in style or content' and compete with local commercial newspapers.

But the facts of the matter are that the vast majority of councils already adhere to this, without the need for new guidance. Fewer than six out of almost 350 councils across the country have sought to publish regular council 'newspapers' and these are not representative of what most produce.

A recent report by a CLG select committee supports this, finding "scant evidence" that council newspapers were "competing unfairly" with local newspapers. It is therefore regrettable that the new code appears to ignore the views of public sector communicators, respected industry figures, the CLG select committee and more importantly residents, by seeking to restrict councils to quarterly publications.

Our own research shows that four in five people (77%) would like their council to give them information about the decisions it is making through a council magazine or newspaper. It also shows that those people who read both a council publication and a local newspaper tend to be the most informed about local public services.

The public needs to know what their local authority is doing if they are to hold it to account and it is vital that all local decisions are explained. It is important that residents have all the information they need, in a convenient and cost-effective way.

At a time when satisfaction with councils is falling and residents are feeling less informed about services, the best councils will work within the spirit of the new code to deliver communications in the most appropriate and cost-effective way for their residents.

Yes, council-run newspapers undermine genuine local journalism

The localist in me doesn't like Mr Pickles telling councils what to do but council run newspapers are, in my experience, a really bad idea and here's why:

One of the key arguments against local council papers is that they suck in local advertising money that would otherwise go to commercial publications. David Higgerson estimates the amount of money redirected from the commercial to the council sector is £4 million.

However, the wider issue is that of the internal money that is redirected to this publication. A lot of councils will run their free sheet as an internal business unit and therefore charge other teams to advertise. As external advertising only makes up about 45% (using Higgerson's figures) of their income the other 55% has to come from within the council.

Those who work for the internal newspaper squeeze as much advertising revenue as they can from the other departments within the council. Every service in the council funds the internal papers, this cannot be the best use of their money or communications budget.

On top of this, there is a very fine line between fact and comment and in my experience these papers get it wrong.

There are no alternative views offered in the paper, when was the last time you read a story in the council paper that said, "council messed up and opposition politicians criticise administration"? Local papers are more than capable of reprinting local government press releases if they are worth it, an internal paper just prints them all without any assessment of quality.

And finally, free sheets distort our communications activities. If you have a free sheet it becomes a comfort blanket. The communications officers in councils have a ready-made catch-all communication tool and therefore don't feel the need to try or do anything else. Council free sheets are an awful method of communicating with our varied public and yet their presence squeezes out all other forms of communication activity.

Overall, the free sheets squeeze out alternative providers, produce comment and not news, take money from other council services and distort communications activities. I'd stop them tomorrow and invest the money in doing a better job of talking with, rather than at, our communities.